A Damsel in Distress eBook

Better to dismiss dreams and return to the practical
side of life by buying the evening papers from the
shabby individual beside him, who had just thrust
an early edition in his face. After all notices
are notices, even when the heart is aching. George
felt in his pocket for the necessary money, found
emptiness, and remembered that he had left all his
ready funds at his hotel. It was just one of
the things he might have expected on a day like this.

The man with the papers had the air of one whose business
is conducted on purely cash principles. There
was only one thing to be done, return to the hotel,
retrieve his money, and try to forget the weight of
the world and its cares in lunch. And from the
hotel he could despatch the two or three cables which
he wanted to send to New York.

The girl in brown was quite close now, and George
was enabled to get a clearer glimpse of her.
She more than fulfilled the promise she had given
at a distance. Had she been constructed to his
own specifications, she would not have been more acceptable
in George’s sight. And now she was going
out of his life for ever. With an overwhelming
sense of pathos, for there is no pathos more bitter
than that of parting from someone we have never met,
George hailed a taxicab which crawled at the side
of the road; and, with all the refrains of all the
sentimental song hits he had ever composed ringing
in his ears, he got in and passed away.

“A rotten world,” he mused, as the cab,
after proceeding a couple of yards, came to a standstill
in a block of the traffic. “A dull, flat
bore of a world, in which nothing happens or ever will
happen. Even when you take a cab it just sticks
and doesn’t move.”

At this point the door of the cab opened, and the
girl in brown jumped in.

“I’m so sorry,” she said breathlessly,
“but would you mind hiding me, please.”

CHAPTER 3.

George hid her. He did it, too, without wasting
precious time by asking questions. In a situation
which might well have thrown the quickest-witted of
men off his balance, he acted with promptitude, intelligence
and despatch. The fact is, George had for years
been an assiduous golfer; and there is no finer school
for teaching concentration and a strict attention
to the matter in hand. Few crises, however unexpected,
have the power to disturb a man who has so conquered
the weakness of the flesh as to have trained himself
to bend his left knee, raise his left heel, swing his
arms well out from the body, twist himself into the
shape of a corkscrew and use the muscle of the wrist,
at the same time keeping his head still and his eye
on the ball. It is estimated that there are twenty-three
important points to be borne in mind simultaneously
while making a drive at golf; and to the man who has
mastered the art of remembering them all the task
of hiding girls in taxicabs is mere child’s
play. To pull down the blinds on the side of the
vehicle nearest the kerb was with George the work of
a moment. Then he leaned out of the centre window
in such a manner as completely to screen the interior
of the cab from public view.